Mastodons, Mammoths, and Wood That's Been Chewed

"Dozer Driver Makes Fossil Discovery of the Century"
Loren Grush, FOXNews (November 20, 2010)

"An accidental discovery by a bulldozer driver has led to what may be the find of the century: an ice-age burial ground that could rival the famed La Brea tar pits.

"After two weeks of excavating ancient fossils at the Ziegler Reservoir near Snowmass Village, Colorado, scientists from the Denver Museum of Natural Science returned home Wednesday with their unearthed treasures in tow -- a wide array of fossils, insects and plant life that they say give a stunningly realistic view of what life was like when ancient, giant beasts lumbered across the Earth.

"Since the team's arrival in mid-October, scientists have extracted nearly 600 bones from about 20 different animals from the Pleistocene era, a period of time during the Ice Age. The remains of up to six different species have been exhumed, including five American mastodons, three Ice Age bison, a Jefferson's ground sloth, a mule deer, a tiger salamander, and two Columbian mammoths. ..."

For paleontologists, this is a pretty big deal. For one thing, the article points out that the number of mastodons found in Colorado went from three - found over the last 120 years - to eight. In about two weeks.

It's not just the number of specimens. It's where they are.

"...The Ziegler Reservoir stands at the top of a ridge at an elevation that is higher than most excavation sites. The reservoir was soon revealed to be a glacial lake that had filled over, allowing the fossils inside to survive erosion for more than 40,000 years.

" 'We've got a lot of records at low elevation where sediment accumulates and where fossils are better preserved,' Miller told FoxNews.com. 'But you really don't get things like lakes preserved at high elevations for long periods of time,' said Miller. 'So this site is really going to help us answer questions about how high elevation floras and faunas reacted to Pleistocene climate change.'..."

There's more than mastodons and mammoths in the Ziegler Reservoir find: like insects, plants, and wood that looks like it's been worked over by a beaver. That doesn't seem very exciting - unless you're someone looking at an opportunity to study an ancient ecosystem.

One thing seems obvious right away, from the new Colorado fossils: Things have changed in the last 40,000 years.

The Lemming went on (and on) about change, and how folks react to it, yesterday. One thing that's interesting - in the Lemming's opinion - is how ideas about how change happened have changed over the last hundred years. (August 10, 2010)

Folks who study facets of the universe like the development of life, how Earth's interior works, or how the planets and stars got to where they are now, have been on some very steep learning curves. And we don't seem to be all that much close to having 'all the answers.' Sometimes it seems that we're collecting questions faster than we're finding answers. Which the Lemming doesn't mind one bit.

From quite a few points of view, this is a very exciting time to live in.

Not-completely-unrelated posts:

• "Lemming Tracks: Ice Age, Global Warming, Climate Change, and Living Scared"
  (November 19, 2010)
• "Age of the Earth, Illustrated: Almost A Century Ago"
  (August 10, 2010)
• "People in Britain 800,000 Years Ago: Pollen, Mammoth Bones, and Tools"
  (July 8, 2010)
• " 'Snowball Earth,' Evolution, and Really Old Rocks"
  (March 16, 2010)

More:

• "Change, American Culture, Trilobites, Humanity's History, and the Big Picture"

Lemming Tracks: Ice Age, Global Warming, Climate Change, and Living Scared

The Lemming was born during the Truman administration. That's what it says on my birth certificate, and that's the story I'm sticking with.

I remember when civilization was going to be scraped off the face of the earth by the coming ice age. That was before most of us were going to die in the food riots and ecological disasters popularized by a butterfly expert. (April 20, 2010)

More recently, it's been acid rain and global warming that's gonna kill us all.

An informal spot-check in America's media suggests that global warming's on the way out as the Big Bad. What we're all supposed to be scared silly about now is "climate change."

Oddly enough, I think the doomsayers are right. Sort of.

The Lemming Predicts: Change

This prediction is about as close to a 100 percent sure thing as it gets: A hundred years from now, things will be different. The Lemming will go even further out on this limb: A thousand years from now, things will be different.

How can the Lemming be so confident?

For the last several billion years, change has happened. There's no reason to think that the situation has - well, changed.

Like the fellow said:

"Nothing endures but change."
(Heraclitus, 540 BC - 480 BC) (Drifting at the Edge of Time and Space (October 29, 2009))

Falcons of the Ohio Mountains

People make things. Paleontologists recently unearthed a kitchen that someone used 1,600,000 years or so back. Homo sapiens sapiens wouldn't show up for quite a while - and the kitchen didn't have a refrigerator, but it was an area set up for food preparation.

Like the Lemming said, people make things - and have for quite a long time.

More recently, we've been making buildings. Quite a lot of them. That's - change. Buildings and clusters of buildings have been popping up across the North American continent. As a sort of side-effect, peregrine falcons are now building their nests on the sides of cliff faces - in places that didn't have cliff faces a century or so back. ("Ohio's Falcon Nesting Sites," Ohio Department of Natural Resources)

So far, the Lemming hasn't run into any anguished articles about the dreadful spread of peregrine falcons. Partly, I suspect, because quite a few people like birds.

Change, Dinosaurs, and Somebody's Fault

The Lemming's mentioned this before: America's dominant culture is convinced that vast, impersonal, mindless forces have wrought great changes on the face of the earth for billions and billions of years.

Mountains rose and fell; species appeared, changed, and went extinct; steamy jungles made way for continental glaciers which in their turn melted to form new landscapes.

Change happened: lots and lots of change. And it was part of the fascinating panoply of natural phenomena which Science revealed.

Then, starting maybe a couple centuries ago, change still happened - but it was somebody's fault.

Quite often, change was the fault of the authoritarian, male-dominated, white European culture that was to blame for just about everything else. Officially. And that's another topic. Almost.

The History Channel (which covers a lot more than what's "history," strictly speaking) had a fascinating show on this morning: First Apocalypse. It's about "how we can learn from the dinosaur's fall from grace and how much our own fate may be intertwined with theirs. Are we doomed to follow in the dinosaurs footsteps or can we face down extinction?

"Perhaps this fear is why we are so fascinated by the demise of a species that lived millions of years ago. If something so large that ruled the earth for so long can be wiped out in a matter of centuries, what does that say about our ultimate survival?

"The world we live in may already be in the throws of its own mass extinction... a new apocalypse."

Sounds like the same yadda-yadda about how we're all gonna die of [insert current intellectual fashion]. Some of it is. One can't be taken seriously, these days, unless one says that we're doomed - DOOOOOMED, I TELL YOU!!!!!!

Reminds me of the 'end times' chaps and their perennial apocalypse predictions - that that's almost another topic, too.

Back to First Apocalypse. What was running on History Channel this morning (which may be the same as the video they're selling) included the usual 'big rock killed the dinosaurs' thing. But it did a pretty good job of discussing the reasons for looking beyond that Yucatan impact for explanations.

The documentary suggests that between the Deccan traps, miscellaneous other impacts, changing landscapes, climate change, disease and parasites: the dinosaurs were on their way out when that big rock came down.

There was a particularly interesting bit about a nematode somebody found in a cockroach - which had been frozen in amber. The Lemming is getting off-topic again.

Cockroaches, Climate Change, and Humanity

Remember the Black Death? About a third of Europe died.

More to the point: in that global, species-threatening mega-disaster - two thirds of Europe didn't die.

The Lemming isn't trying to minimize the scope of that tragedy. But folks who weren't killed by the Black Death picked up the pieces of their culture, developed new social structures - and eventually discovered the usefulness of penicillin.

And microbes that aren't killed by penicillin. Which is another topic.

The point? It's like the one fellow in that documentary implied: Humans are about as hard to get rid of as cockroaches.

Finally, another one of the chaps interviewed (Physics of the Impossible's author, Michio Kaku) discussed the next ice age - which he said was coming in about 10,000 years.

He could be right about that - if we're in an interglacial period, that's when the next episode of continental glaciation is due. Give or take a few millennia.

But the last I checked, the jury's still out on whether or not we're at the end of the most recent set of ice ages - or in one of the more-or-less temporary thaws.

The Lemming's guess is that we'll know for sure - in about 10,000 years. And that folks will be around to argue about it then. And that cockroaches will still be nibbling their way through time.

Related posts:

• "Lemming Tracks: My Take on 'The Future' "
  (November 8, 2010)
• "Dinosaurs, Three Major Asteroid Impacts, and Massive Volcanic Eruptions"
  (August 29, 2010)
• "Lemming Tracks: Observations by an Opportunistic Omnivore"
  (April 20, 2010)
• "Remember When We were Doomed by the Coming Ice Age?"
  (February 17, 2010)
• "Frail, Delicate Little Mother Nature?!"
  (December 20, 2009)
• "That Was Close! Human Race Down to 2,000 Population"
  (April 25, 2008)
• "Sunspots? What Sunspots?"
  (April 25, 2008)
• "And Now, for Something Completely Different: The Medieval Climatic Optimum, The Little Ice Age, and Other Changes"
  (April 20, 2008)

---

More:

• "Change, American Culture, Trilobites, Humanity's History, and the Big Picture"

Lemming Tracks: My Take on 'The Future'

The Lemming ran into another one of those 'what the future may be like' articles. There's the usual stuff: and I didn't think it warranted mention.

Besides, I want to brag about what I've done.

I plan to be back in a few hours, with micro-reviews of - whatever I find that's interesting.

Now, about my stuff. Maybe you already know about this blog's link page for posts about 'the future:'

• "The Future: Just Like Today, Only Different"

I started going back through this blog's posts in October, 2009, looking for posts that were about the future, one way or another. That took me all the way back to " 'The Future Isn't What it Used To Be' " (August 22, 2007).

I've been keeping "The Future: Just Like Today, Only Different" updated since then. The two most recent additions:

• Robots (and waldos)
  • "Driverless Van: Nifty Concept; Apparently Works"
    (October 28, 2010)
• "Future" technology
  • "Yves Rossy and His Flying Backpack"
    (October 30, 2010)

The Lemming, as I've discussed before, is "apathetic" only in the sense that I don't keep up with the crisis du jure.

As I point out in that "About the Lemming" page: "Since my priorities don't even come close to the stereotype Starbucks-frequenting, Armani-wearing, New York Times reader, I must be 'apathetic.' "

Also, since I was born during the Truman administration: I've been living in "the future" for quite some time now. It wasn't quite as-advertised. No food riots, the coming ice age didn't, and we still don't have a helicopter in every garage.

Probably just as well, in the case of those personal helicopters. Can you imagine what a traffic jam would be like?

The Future: All Good? All Bad?

The Lemming isn't fashionably pessimistic: I've seen too many 'end of civilization as we know it' predictions fizzle, and know a little too much about the last few billion years of Earth's history to get all that excited about statistical blips from the weather service. More about that in "Change, American Culture, Trilobites, Humanity's History, and the Big Picture," another link page.

The Lemming didn't retain the unreasonably rosy notion of Progress that was fading in my early years. But I didn't buy into the 'and we're all gonna die' attitude that followed it, either.

I mentioned my take on Progress in a post about the Gliese 581 planetary system. (October 4, 2010) And discussed it in a post in another blog: "The Pope, Science, and Technology: My Take," A Catholic Citizen in America (October 30, 2010))

Change Happens

One thing I've noticed, over the last half-century or so: Change happens.

I'm okay with that.

Dinosaurs, Three Major Asteroid Impacts, and Massive Volcanic Eruptions

"No, Seriously, What Killed the Dinosaurs?"
Earth News, Discovery News (August 28, 2010)

"Seems like an easy one to answer: an asteroid around six miles wide slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula. Continent-wide firestorms, planet-enshrouding dust cloud, massive plant death, toxic ozone, carbon monoxide poisoning ... and that's it: one resounding mass extinction all wrapped up in a pretty, hellish package and explained by a big hole in southeastern Mexico, right?

"Well, the more scientists look, the more complicated the answer becomes. For starters, there were a series of truly enormous volcanic eruptions in what is now western India around the same time. Collectively, the Deccan Traps spewed enough noxious gas that some say it was the cause of the extinction.

"Then there's a weird crater-looking structure right next door to the Deccan Traps. If that turns out to be from an asteroid impact, it would be the largest crater found on Earth. Ever. And just this week, a study in the journal Geology reported there may have been yet another impact, in the Ukraine....."

The Discovery News article does a pretty good job of summing up what we know - what we don't know, but can make educated guesses about - and what we quite simply don't know about what happened about 65,000,000 years back when the dinosaurs stopped living.

The two big hits - the one in what's now the Yucatan Peninsula and the other (probable) impact west of where Mumbai, India is today - apparently happened just a few thousand years apart, but not simultaneously. Which raises some questions:

"...The odds of the two rocks being part of a binary system is small -- if they were, they should have hit simultaneously. But they're still suspiciously close together, suggesting that perhaps some great collision in the solar system sent a scatter-shot of space rocks headed our way.

"Meanwhile, we still have to contend with the Shiva structure, a 500 km-wide gouge in the planet off India that could be the scar left by an asteroid several times bigger than the one that caused the Chicxulub crater...."

Add that smaller impact in what's now the Ukraine, and you've got three impacts around the same time: small; medium; and large. Maybe no one of them would have caused enough trouble to kill off the dinosaurs: but all three, only a few thousand years apart? Add the Deccan Traps eruptions, and you've got something like a Hollywood disaster flick: only spread out over a few millennia.

The Lemming was impressed with the last two paragraphs of the article:

"...It's even been suggested that the Chicxulub impact caused the Deccan Traps to erupt, by way of a huge earthquake that rippled through the planet.

"Such ideas may sound a little ludicrous, but that doesn't mean they're wrong. Life is, generally speaking, very resilient, and dinosaurs were no exception. It would have taken a huge cataclysm -- maybe even several in quick succession -- to end their over 150-million-year reign on Earth."

It's a bit of relief to see that someone's been paying attention. Over the third-of-a-billion or so years that things have been growing on Earth, we've had asteroid impacts, massive volcanic eruptions (real eruptions: not that little Mount St. Helens firecracker), and the occasional ice age. If life were the delicate thing that the more strident 'and we're all gonna die' folks seem to think, we wouldn't be here.

Related posts:

• "Asteroid Crater Under the Timor Sea: It Could Happen Again"
  (June 3, 2010)
• "Asteroids and Earth: Time for the Space Patrol?"
  (May 2, 2010)
• "Dinosaurs, Runaway Volcanism, Change, and Evolution"
  (March 24, 2010)
• "Looks Like a Big Rock Killed the Dinosaurs"
  (March 7, 2010)
• "Asteroid Impact? Yes; Dinosaur-Killing Firestorm? Maybe Not"
  (December 31, 2009)
• "Frail, Delicate Little Mother Nature?!
  (December 20, 2009)

More, in this blog:

• Change, American Culture, Trilobites, Humanity's History, and the Big Picture "

More, elsewhere:

• "Shiva Structure: A Possible KT Boundary Impact Crater on the Western Shelf of India"
  Sankar Chatterjee, Necip Guven, Aaron Yoshinobu, and Richard Donofrio, Special Publications, Museum Texas Tech University (2002? 2006?) (pdf)

Mammoth Ivory, Movie Star, Big Assumption

The Mammoth Ivory Male head from Dolni Vestonice
A possible forgery
"Forgeries, Hoaxes and Curiosities"
Don's Maps

"This may be a portrait of the person with a protruding brow whose skull was found in Brno, Czechoslovakia, in 1891. The question still remains, when was it carved?

Since these photographs were published in the National Geographic in October 1988, and Plains of Passage was published in 1990, Jean Auel could well have used it as the model for Brugar, the person of mixed spirits described in Plains of Passage as having lived at Dolni Vestonice.

Eight centimetre high male head carved of mammoth ivory dated at 26 000 years BP.

Note that the figure has very heavy brow ridges. The figure has been stated to have a beard, but this feature is not obvious from the photographs.

Note also that Paul Bahn writing in 'Journey through the Ice Age', says that the head may be a fake. His main argument seems to be lack of provenance (meaning that it was not found by a recognised [!] and trusted archaeologist, or with reliable witnesses to the discovery) and that the style is too modern. He also says that the Lady of Brassempouy (the ivory carving of Ayla) may be a fake...."

Dolni Vestonice, or Dolní Věstonice, is near the village Dolní Věstonice, also known as Unterwisternitz, in what's currently called the Czech Republic. I suppose that should be Věstonická and Česká Republika - but that's enough of linguistics for the moment.

As to whether or not the carving was really made recently, or about 26,000 years ago, my guess is that the late-20th-century analysis of uranium/decay products ratios is right - which puts the ivory and the carving of the ivory about two hundred and sixty centuries back.

Does the carving look "modern?" Yes, but so do paintings made on the walls of the Altamira cave - which we're pretty sure were made at the same time that someone carved that ivory head. Give or take a few millennia.

I think it's a mistake to assume that folks who lived a few centuries, millennia, or tens of millennia, ago were "primitive" in the 19th-century sense of the word.

Or that a particular style has to have come from a particular era.

Take the three sculptures in these photos, for example: they show a fairly clear progression: from a quite realistic, literal, interpretation of a subject, through an intermediate phase, to a highly abstract treatment.



Just one problem with that analysis: left-to-right, the sculptures were made approximately 2, 25, and zero millennia ago.

The "modern" one is about 22 centuries old.

Two points, and I'm done with this post: When I saw that ivory head, the first thing that came to mind was that it looked more than a bit like Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan the Barbarian; and, here's the cover of the National Geographic issue that Don's Maps quoted from:



Related post:

• "African Art, Photos, and a Whacking Great Generalization"
  (June 21, 2010)

People in Britain 800,000 Years Ago: Pollen, Mammoth Bones, and Tools

"Dig Discovers Ancient Britons Were Earliest North Europeans"
Science Daily (July 7, 2010)

"A University College London archaeologist is part of a team who have unearthed the earliest evidence of human occupation in Britain.

"Simon Parfitt was part of a team of archaeologists, palaeontologists and earth scientists from the British Museum, the Natural History Museum, UCL, and Queen Mary, University of London, who unearthed the new evidence at an archaeological dig in East Anglia.

"Their findings demonstrate that ancient humans occupied Britain over 800,000 years ago, marking the first known settlement in northern Europe -- far earlier than previously thought...."

This dig was at Happisburgh, Norfolk: and is special in several ways.

For the moment, it's the earliest evidence of people in Britain.

The 70 flint tools and flakes found give researchers something to work with, as they try to figure out who lived there - and how they managed to do so.

Since the climate in what's now Norfolk was boreal - a bit past 'chilly' - the old assumption that people didn't live in an area until the climate was nice and warm has to be dropped.

And this time, we don't just have a few dozen tools and other bits and pieces left by human beings.

"...'The site is exceptional because of the unprecedented preservation of the original materials, from pollen grains to chunks of wood, and mammoth bones to voles and mice. We've even found remains of beetles and plants, which are missing from other sites. What we have in Happisburgh is a complete buried landscape.'..."

What I didn't find in the Science Daily article was just what sort of humans left those 70-odd bits of technology. 800,000 years ago, it's just about a sure thing that they weren't exactly 'British.'

Eight tenths of a million years back, the folks who lived in Happisburgh were most likely what we call Homo Erectus. I'll grant that it'd take more than a haircut and new clothes to make them blend into a crowd today - but they were living in houses that had distinct kitchen areas about 800,000 years back, so I don't think they were all that different. (December 21, 2009)


(from the BioAnthropology Section of Minnesota State University, used w/o permission)

Related post:

• "Homo Erectus, Kitchens, and Human (Pre)History"
  (December 21, 2009)

More:

• "Fossil Record"
  Minnesota State University, Mankato

---

Related posts, at

• "Change, American Culture, Trilobites, Humanity's History, and the Big Picture"

'Snowball Earth,' Evolution, and Really Old Rocks

"Snowball Earth: New Evidence Hints at Global Glaciation 716.5 Million Years Ago"
Science Daily (March 5, 2010)

"Geologists have found evidence that sea ice extended to the equator 716.5 million years ago, bringing new precision to a 'snowball Earth' event long suspected to have taken place around that time.

"Led by scientists at Harvard University, the team reports on its work in the journal Science. The new findings -- based on an analysis of ancient tropical rocks that are now found in remote northwestern Canada -- bolster the theory that our planet has, at times in the past, been ice-covered at all latitudes.

" 'This is the first time that the Sturtian glaciation has been shown to have occurred at tropical latitudes, providing direct evidence that this particular glaciation was a "snowball Earth" event,' says lead author Francis A. Macdonald, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard. 'Our data also suggests that the Sturtian glaciation lasted a minimum of 5 million years.'

"The survival of eukaryotic life throughout this period indicates sunlight and surface water remained available somewhere on the surface of Earth. The earliest animals arose at roughly the same time, following a major proliferation of eukaryotes...."

The article goes into a little more detail: including how the scientists were able to tell that the rocks they were studying had been near the equator and at (or near, I presume) sea level about three quarters of a billion years ago.

Interestingly, all the major eukaryotic (having cells with a membrane around the nucleus) groups we know today were around before the Sturtian glaciation - with the possible exception of animals.

The lead author for the study, Francis A. Macdonald, said: "...'The questions that arise from this are: If a snowball Earth existed, how did these eukaryotes survive? Moreover, did the Sturtian snowball Earth stimulate evolution and the origin of animals?'

" 'From an evolutionary perspective,' he adds, 'it's not always a bad thing for life on Earth to face severe stress.'..."

No 'final answers,' of course: but this is a pretty good look at one more era in Earth's past.

Vaguely-related posts:

• "Earthquakes, Nuclear Winter, the End of the World, and All That"
  (February 28, 2010)
• "Frail, Delicate Little Mother Nature?!"
  (December 20, 2009)
• "SDSS 0922+2928 and SDSS 1102+2054 - Hot Stuff for Astronomers"
  (November 12, 2009)
• "Change, American Culture, Trilobites, Humanity's History, and the Big Picture"
  (September 26, 2009)
• "Death Rays From Space - No, Really"
  (August 28, 2009)
• "Betelgeuse Shedding Mass Like There's No Tomorrow"
  (July 29, 2009)
• "Lemming Tracks: All Betelgeuse, All the Time"
  (June 10, 2009)

---

More in this blog:

• "Change, American Culture, Trilobites, Humanity's History, and the Big Picture"
  (Last updated December 21, 2009)

Remember When We were Doomed by the Coming Ice Age?

"Ice Age"
Tales of Future Past

"By dint of laborious calculation it has been shown that the sun's heat is by slow degrees becoming less and less, and that some day, long years hence, the sun will no longer give out the warmth necessary for human existence. Mounting his "time machine," Mr. (H. G.) Wells plunges off into the future...."

After that quote from Pearson's Magazine (1900), The "Ice Age" entry ends with:

"...If you live in most parts of the world, the words 'ice age' are the haunting promise of a planet shrouded in a funeral pall of ice, cities crushed by relentlessly grinding mountains of ice, and all of human achievement smothered under a blanket of never ending snow as the populace stare out in numbed horror from their tiny hovels, like pin-point oases of warmth, at a world in the hand of icy death.

"If you live in the American Midwest, it means it's September."

I live in central Minnesota, a couple hundred miles short of where the upper Midwest ends and Canada begins.

It's not all that bad, really, as long as you don't mind living in a place where water is a mineral for a fair portion of the year. On the up side, the wide selection of invertebrate blood suckers we share the state with are dormant then.

Tales of Future Past is part of a large, complex website, so I prepared this 'bread crumb' trail, to help you find this and related pages: Tales of Future Past > "Dystopias" > "End of the World" > "Ice Age."

Good luck, and don't let the Martians get you.

If you're particularly earnest about the more recent crises du jour, don't worry: the Dystopias section on how the world will end also has pages for "Overpopulation," "Pollution," and "Vogons."

If this isn't relevant enough, come back in about 22 hours: The Lemming has something on Solar energy lined up for tomorrow morning.

Frail, Delicate Little Mother Nature?!

I heard that the theme for this year's Christmas program at the elementary school was "Santa goes green." These days, I'm grateful that we're allowed to use the word "Christmas" for something like that.

But: "goes green"?!

Taking the now-traditional version of Santa's operation, we've got:

• No factory - Santa uses
  • A labor-intensive workshop
  • Run by elves
    • Who live what can most charitably be described as an early-19th century lifestyle
    • Elf rights violations, anyone?
• A transportation system powered by magical reindeer
  • Zero pollution - aside from flatulence and droppings from eight reindeer
    • Nine, after Rudolph made the team

Although the way Santa treats his elves may be leaving him open to serious trouble from a labor rights standpoint - his workshop and sleigh as it stands seems to be the very model of an ecologically clean, Earth-friendly operation. I suppose the big guy could assign elves to keep an eye on kids and collect wrapping paper for recycling. Or start using biodegradable brown paper to wrap the presents.

Mother Nature: Clara Bow or Queen Boudicca?

In some circles, 'everybody knows' about Earth's delicate ecosystem and the awful, terrible things that will happen if the rest of us aren't careful. I get the idea that Mother Nature is seen as a frail little 1920s movie actress: all big eyes and toothpick limbs. Sort of like Clara Bow after a long fast.

If I were to personify life on Earth, she'd be more like the growing things that have been around for the last 2,500,000,000 years or so.

One adjective I wouldn't use for life on Earth is "frail." Sure, individual species, like the panda and the koala, could die out if their environment changed a little - and we didn't take an interest in keeping them alive.

Others, not so much. Think pigeons, rats, cockroaches: and, probably, us. Again, think about it: we're opportunistic omnivores that are living on every continent except Antarctica - and we're starting to move in there.

It's true, though: some kinds of creatures aren't around anymore. Like trilobites and the dinosaurs - unless you count birds as flight-adapted dinosaurs. Just about the only unchanging thing on Earth is that things change. Which, I think, troubles some people.

Back to the personification of life on Earth, Mother Nature.

So far, Earth has seen about seven major ice ages. Every few million years a really big hunk of ice, rock, or metal hits Earth, blasting large areas immediately - and sometimes causing global damage. That may (or may not) be what killed off the dinosaurs.

But not other creatures - including our (very) remote ancestors.

Let's face it: Earth's a tough old mother; she's been through a lot; and it looks like it'll take more than manure and coal fires (the 19th century's dreadful pollution problem) or carelessly-discarded six-pack rings to do her in.

Don't get me wrong: I think fur seals are cute; I like spotted owls; my household recycles; and I don't think it makes sense to pour industrial waste into water we'll be drinking later. But getting worked up about poor, frail little Mother Nature?

I think she needs about as much protection as Queen Boudicca did, roughly 19½ centuries back.¹

Related posts:

• "Change, American Culture, Trilobites, Humanity's History, and the Big Picture"
  (Last updated December 20, 2009)
• "Global Warming, End Times - 'We're All Gonna Die' Over the Last 45 Years Or So"
  A Catholic Citizen in America (October 3, 2009)
• "The Ice is Falling! Runaway Melt Mode! And You Should See What's Happening to Minnesota Trees!"
  (September 23, 2009)
• "Earth Day 2009: Don't Stop Breathing to Save Earth"
  (April 22, 2009)
• "Antarctic Ice Cap Didn't Get the Memo"
  (April 18, 2009)
• "American Academic Institutions: Impartial, Neutral, Nonpartisan, Dispassionate"
  Another War-on-Terror Blog (April 29, 2008)
  Particularly the discussion of
  • two people:
    • Dr. William Gray
    • Ben
• "Earth Day 2009: Don't Stop Breathing to Save Earth"
  (April 22, 2009)
• " 'My Mind's Made Up: Don't Confuse Me With the Facts' "
  (March 3, 2008)

Background:

• Earth Impact Database
• "Prehistoric Time Line"
  Science and Space, National Geographic
• "Ice Age Explanation"
  Scott "Welcome to the world of Ice Age Paleoecology!" Elias, Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological Research Site
  • It's only fair to warn you: some of the ice age information is heretical
• "Ice Ages"
  Canadian Museum of Nature
  • Mentions four of the seven major ice ages:
    • about 2 million years ago to the present—the Quaternary Ice Age
    • 350 to 250 million years ago—the Karoo Ice Age
    • 800 to 600 million years ago—the Cryogenian (or Sturtian-Varangian) Ice Age
    • 2400 to 2100 million years ago—the Huronian Ice Age

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¹ You may not have heard of Boudicca of the Iceni, but she made quite an impression on the Romans: metaphorically and literally. I think it didn't help that Romans were, compared to the inhabitants of northwestern Europe - well, not all that big. Boudicca might not have given the Romans much trouble, except that when her husband, king of the Iceni, died, the Roman occupiers of Britain were - imprudent.

"...As a beginning, his widow Boudicca was flogged and their daughters raped...." (Tacitus, "Annals")

I suppose they thought that, being a woman, she'd be cowed into subservience. Didn't work out that way. She was displeased about her personal treatment: and about how the Roman overlords were treating her people. By the time she was through: "...Two cities were sacked, eighty thousand of the Romans and of their allies perished, and the island was lost to Rome...."
(Cassius Dio, "Roman History (LXII.1-2)")

Aside from her sincerely non-helpless nature, I think Boudicca's appearance makes a pretty good model for Mother Nature:

"...In stature she was very tall, in appearance most terrifying, in the glance of her eye most fierce, and her voice was harsh; a great mass of the tawniest hair fell to her hips...."
(Cassius Dio, "Roman History (LXII.1-2)")

About that "harsh voice" - Cassius Dio was a Roman, writing from a Roman point of view. After what she'd been through, I daresay Queen Boudicca's voice might have been a trifle harsh when she spoke to Romans.

Earth Day 2009: Don't Stop Breathing to Save Earth

Today's news has quite a few articles about how America's president is saving the Earth.

I realize that there have to be rules about what we do with trash. Decades ago, I read that paleontologists and archeologists use trash heaps and garbage dumps to learn about how people live: and that just about everybody has had a place where junk is put. So, environmental regulations of some kind are thousands of years old.

I remember the first Earth Day, back in 1970. A green flag flew over the campus, and there was a groovy vibe to saving Earth from The Man.

I didn't change my lifestyle all that much, though. My parents had grown up in the Great Depression, so recycling and avoiding waste were habits I wasn't even aware I had: until I saw how much my contemporaries threw away.

Earth's a Tough Old Mother

"Mother Nature" has been portrayed many ways. One of my favorites is the version played by Dena Dietrich in the 1970s Chiffon margarine commercials: "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature."

I get the impression that some of the more enthusiastic environmentalists see her as a sort of ancient 1920s flapper: all big eyes and scrawny legs. A helpless damsel who needs constant rescuing.

If life on Earth were like that frail waif, we wouldn't be here now.

Our Debatably Dependable Sun

Earth circles a slightly variable star. The most obvious change over time is the sunspot cycle that affects the auroras and the ionosphere, and makes life interesting for people who maintain radio communications.

We still, as far as I know, don't know why the Maunder Minimum happened - so it's possible that there's still more to learn about the sun and its cycles.

Occasional Ice Ages

For whatever reason, Earth goes through ice ages at not-exactly-regular intervals. Six of them were big ones. We may be in the 6th now: It was a 'known fact' that we were headed for another glacial period when I was growing up, but fashions have changed.

Whatever point we're at in Earth's big freezes now, it's not as bad as the cold period that started around 800,000,000 years ago. Glaciers got to within 15 degrees of Earth's equator that time.

Asteroid Impacts Now and Again

Then there are the occasional asteroid and comet hits: the last big one may have wiped out the dinosaurs and made room for us.

And Yet, Life is Still Here

From my point of view, Mother Nature seems to have more in common with Queen Boudicca than a 1920s flapper: all big eyes and narrow legs, like Clara Bow. This isn't a value judgement: Clara Bow had a successful film career. On the other hand, Queen Boudicca left a deep impression on the Romans of her day. Figuratively and literally.

I'm Not Worried About Earth and Nature: But I Live Sensibly

I don't have quite the faith in Man And His Technology that many people do. The idea that "now we are in control of the forces of nature" wears a little thin when set up against something like the Mt. St. Hellens eruption. And that was a hiccup compared to Earth's more noticeable volcanic events: like the last eruption of the Yellowstone caldera, that covered about 2/3 of today's 48 contiguous states with ash. Then there was the Mount Toba event that may have come close to wiping out humanity.

I think that getting lead out of gasoline is a good idea, and that it makes good sense on several levels to buy what you need, and recognize everything beyond that as luxury. My household uses water and power in moderation - for financial reasons if nothing else - and we recycle.

But that doesn't mean that I'm going to go crazy over whatever today's intellectual fashion dictates.

Related posts

• "Ancient Antarctic Ecosystem: Isolated for Millions of Years"
  (April 16, 2009)
• "Life is Left-Handed on Earth (Caution: Geeky Content)"
  (March 23, 2009)
• "The Purple Hills of Earth?"
  (September 6, 2008)
• "How to Destroy Earth (It Ain't Gonna be Easy)"
  (July 9, 2008)
• "Old Articles About Old Stuff: History of Earth's Continents"
  (May 18, 2008)
• "The Sun as a Swinger? Cardiff U's Title is Better for Mass Extinction Article"
  (May 12, 2008)
• "Sunspots? What Sunspots?"
  (April 25, 2008)
• "And Now, for Something Completely Different: The Medieval Climatic Optimum, The Little Ice Age, and Other Changes"
  (April 20, 2008)
• " 'My Mind's Made Up: Don't Confuse Me With the Facts' "
  (March 3, 2008)
• "Climates in the Inner Solar System"
  (February 28, 2008)
• ""Journey of Mankind:" 160,000 Years of Ups and Downs"
  (November 1, 2007)
• "A Blogging Blog for Bloggers"
  (September 13, 2007)

More at

• "Glacier"
  Encyclopedia of Earth
• "Fossile Mysteries"
  San Diego Natural History Museum
  • Timeline of Earth's most recent 2,500,000,000,years

Red River Valley of the North Flood, 2009: April 20

News as I ran across it this evening:

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"Spy plane shows worth as flood-fighting tool"
The Southern Ledger (April 14, 2009)


(from Southern Ledger, used w/o permission)

"As the swollen Red River threatened Fargo this spring, thousands of eyes were trained on the city's miles of sandbag walls. But just in case the townspeople missed something, the eye in the sky was watching, too.

"A Predator drone of the sort used by the American military to launch missile strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan was sent up three times in recent weeks to give officials a bird's-eye view of the floodwaters, marking the first time one of the unmanned, remote-controlled planes has been used for flood-fighting in the U.S.

"Equipped with radar and infrared cameras that can see in the dark and peer through clouds, the aircraft provided remarkably detailed, real-time video images of ice floes, flood patterns and any trouble spots along the levees...."

I remember when lines like "sensors indicate three life forms" were, literally, the stuff of Star Trek.

Last month, I'm pretty sure the pilot flying a drone from a base in Grand Forks didn't say "life forms" or "sensors" - but that's what was being done. The Predator's radar and infrared 'sensors' were a valuable tool during the flood.

There's been a heavy military presence on the American side of the border during this flood: many of the soldiers were National Guardsmen either building dikes to save their own neighborhoods; or defending someone else's home while theirs either stayed dry - or not.

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Caution! This link, quote, and micro-review are not politically correct.
Repeating data or opinions expressed here in an academic setting may be harmful to your academic career.
"Obama flunks Global Warming 101 on Fargo"
Canada Free Press (April 20, 2009)

" 'When the freedom they wished for most was the freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and never was free again.' Edith Hamilton.

"President Obama used recent flooding in Fargo, North Dakota to push his misguided belief in global warming. His comment, 'If you look at the flooding that's going on right now in North Dakota and you say to yourself, "If you see an increase of two degrees, what does that do, in terms of the situation there?" ' is speculative and completely wrong.

"A two-degree warmer North Dakota would mean less snowfall, therefore less flooding. Spring flooding along the Red River of the north is due to snow melt and the geography of the region. This year the cold winter caused heavy snow in the south basin and all across the northern continental US. Obama's comments do what the focus on global warming does; diverts us from real issues. In this case it is flooding and people living in naturally high-risk areas...."

There's quite a bit of information - including maps - about the last major glaciation in North America in this op-ed piece, as well as some informed opinions that defy the doctrine of Global Warming.

I'm old enough to remember when an ice age was going to come in a few centuries, or maybe a few thousand years. That speculation was alarmist, but had a fairly solid factual base. The coming glaciation was seen as a continuation of the ice age we're in now. (Background: Human civilizations grew during an interglacial period. Or, maybe, at the very end of the most recent ice age.)

Now, it's global warming that we're supposed to be afraid of. If I'm careful with my health, I may live long enough to see another glaciation be the climate crisis du jure.

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"Raw Video: Coast Guard Evacuates Flood Victims"
Associated Press, YouTube (April 19, 2009)
video 2:08
"The U.S. Coast Guard rescued people trapped by rising flood waters along the Red River in Fargo, North Dakota. (April 20) "



List of posts about this flood:

• "Red River Valley of the North Flood, 2009"

North America Carpet-Bombed by Comets? A New Look at the Good Old Days

In case you've been wondering what happened to the Clovis culture, there's a new explanation: involving lots of little, tiny, diamonds.

All of this happened about 12,900 years ago: so this might not be the most gripping post in this blog for you. On the other hand, if you're as interested as I am, in what was happening to a bunch of mammoths, little flowers, and people back then, keep reading.

• "Study: Diamonds link comet to mammal extinction"
  CNN (January 2, 2009)
  • "(CNN) -- Tiny diamonds found in the soil are "strong evidence" a comet exploded on or above North America nearly 13,000 years ago, leading to the extinction of dozens of mammal species, according to a study...."
• "Diamonds suggest comets caused killer cold spell"
  Reuters (January 2, 2009)
  • "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tiny diamonds sprinkled across North America suggest a "swarm" of comets hit the Earth around 13,000 years ago, kicking up enough disruption to send the planet into a cold spell and drive mammoths and other creatures into extinction, scientists reported on Friday...."
• " 'Giant comet strike' on America caused extinction of ancient civilisation"
  TimesOnline (January 2, 2009)
  • "An entire civilisation that suddenly vanished off the face of the earth 12,900 years ago — along with several species of prehistoric animals — may have been made extinct because of a devastating comet strike...."
• "Nanodiamonds in the Younger Dryas Boundary Sediment Layer"
  Science (January 2, 2009)
  • "We report abundant nanodiamonds in sediments dating to 12.9 ± 0.1 thousand calendar years before the present at multiple locations across North America. Selected area electron diffraction patterns reveal two diamond allotropes in this boundary layer but not above or below that interval. Cubic diamonds form under high temperature-pressure regimes, and n-diamonds also require extraordinary conditions, well outside the range of Earth's typical surficial processes but common to cosmic impacts. N-diamond concentrations range from {asymp}10 to 3700 parts per billion by weight, comparable to amounts found in known impact layers. These diamonds provide strong evidence for Earth's collision with a rare swarm of carbonaceous chondrites or comets at the onset of the Younger Dryas cool interval, producing multiple airbursts and possible surface impacts, with severe repercussions for plants, animals, and humans in North America...."
  (The complete article is available online to subscribers only.)
• "Six North American sites hold 12,900-year-old nanodiamond-rich soil"
  University of Oregon Media Relations (January 2, 2009)
  • "Discoveries consistent with theory of Clovis-age disruption by cosmic event, say nine-member team led by the UO's Doug Kennett
  • "EUGENE, Ore. -- (Jan. 2, 2009) -- Abundant tiny particles of diamond dust exist in sediments dating to 12,900 years ago at six North American sites, adding strong evidence for Earth’s impact with a rare swarm of carbon-and-water-rich comets or carbonaceous chondrites, reports a nine-member scientific team...."

Despite the tone of absolute certainty in the general-circulation news, this may not be the final word on what happened to the Clovis culture in North America.

However, between tiny carbon crystals (or nanodiamonds - a much cooler term), a dark mat of carbon-rich stuff over the last Clovis artifacts, and other evidence, it looks quite likely that something hit Earth over North America about 12,900 years ago. Whether it was a lot of carbon-rich space rocks, or a swarm of comets, it was very bad news for the Clovis people, and the plants and animals the gathered and hunted. Humans bounced back, eventually, but mammoths and some other creatures didn't.

More about the Younger Dryas:

• "Abrupt Climate Change - The Younger Dryas"
  The Earth Institute at Columbia Univeristy
• "The Younger Dryas Period"
  Part of "Climate of the Last 20,000 Years"
  Group 18, Department of Atmospheric Services, University of Washington
• "3000 BC: Notes and References"
  Stanford University

That Was Close! Human Race Down to 2,000 Population

"Study: Humans Almost Became Extinct 70,000 Years Ago"
FoxNEWS (April 25, 2008)

Very interesting stuff: this is about one of the genetics studies that are polishing another facet of the human experience.

Even more interesting, when you look at an interactive timeline I reviewed last year (" 'Journey of Mankind:' 60,000 Years of Ups and Downs" (November 1, 2007)).

The "70,000 years ago" catastrophe may correspond with the Mt. Toba eruption in Sumatra that left up to five meters of ash on India and Pakistan, and produced an "instant 1,000-year ice age" - those were not the Good Old Days.

Sunspots? What Sunspots?

"Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh"
The Australian (April 23, 2008)

"THE scariest photo I have seen on the internet is www.spaceweather.com, where you will find a real-time image of the sun from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, located in deep space at the equilibrium point between solar and terrestrial gravity.

"What is scary about the picture is that there is only one tiny sunspot."

Today's hot issue is Global Warming.

A few decades back, kids got chilling warnings about the coming ice age. I was Born in 1951, and remember those textbooks and magazines that said another ice age was coming. I remember thinking, 'cool!'

Now, the hot issue is Global Warming.

Phil Chapman, the fellow who wrote that article, is a geophysicist, astronautical engineer, and astronaut, took a look at sunspot activity. He's aware of how much the sun affects us, and has some very interesting points.

Maybe it's time to rewrite the textbooks again?

And Now, for Something Completely Different: The Medieval Climatic Optimum, The Little Ice Age, and Other Changes

"Detailed Chronology of Late Holocene Climatic Change"
James S. Aber (2007)
Emporia State University, Kansas

This isn't exactly light reading, but it's a fascinating overview of weather and climate over the last few thousand years: and the effects that these changes had on civilizations.